How One Designer Is Getting Us to Talk About Mental Illness at New York Fashion Week

Pyer Moss' A/W 2016 runway show was an intentional mix of the awe-inspiring beauty and imagination that is New York Fashion Week punctuated by the realism designer Kerby Jean-Raymond has become known for. The main attraction was the fashion, but so was the context, setting and soundtrack.

Guests chuckled as a choir gloriously belted out songs by
hip-hop artists Future and Fetty Wap. They clapped wildly when the show's
stylist, R&B singer Erykah Badu emerged from backstage to take her seat. They leaned forward from their benches to read the Pyer Moss
sweatshirts that read "Suffer No More." They sat still while the room filled with palpable sorrow when the show
referenced the suicide of Black Lives Matter activist MarShawn McCarrel II.

"My demons won today. I'm sorry," read a large picket sign held by one of the models on the
runway at the close of their New
York Fashion Week show Saturday. McCarrel had
posted those words on his Facebook page hours before he took his life on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse.

"Had he had people in his life that understood that depression was a real thing," Pyer Moss founder Jean-Raymond told Mic, "and understood that depression was a real thing people deal with it in different ways, and mask it more times than actually resolve it, he would've probably still been around and that's the dialogue that we want to open up."

Jean-Raymond is a dynamic storyteller and has a proven ability to
incorporate current events into his runway shows and collections. He is also
pragmatic, designing a collection filled with furs, shearling and puffer jackets
that is undeniably well suited for the blistering winds that blow outside of
Milk Studios. He works hard to create a very necessary dialogue on social issues
that often affect people that exist in the margins.

Building on several high-profile cases and a robust movement,
last season he zoomed in on police brutality. This season his focus was
depression, informed by the psychological concept known as "double-bind"— a
term coined in the 1960s by social scientist Gregory Bateson that occurs when "conflicting demands are placed
on an individual, thereby resulting in confusion in thinking and
communication." Double-bind is most commonly used to refer to cases concerning patients diagnosed
with schizophrenia.

Although the show was not as focused on black life as last season's, issues of mental health in the black community coupled with idea of the double-bind was visible. This was reflected not only by the picket sign but also via the music that underscored the show.

The choir, which was accompanied by an orchestra, stood at the front of the
runway donning white hospital smocks (to represent patients) that
read "Pyer Moss" across their chests. They sang in the style
of Tropera — a genre coined by Erykah Badu, who called it a combination of
trap music and opera. Sterling Overshown, the music composer and choir director, called the compilation of songs, which also included the Black American national anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," a "Baroque Negro Spiritual."

Jean-Raymond told Mic he chose the songs because they were polar opposites: Future's "Trap N**gas" and Fetty Wap's "RGF Island" reflected "the dark
times of black culture," while "Lift Every Voice and Sing" represented racial uplift.

While the music provided a pulsating soundtrack to reflect the double-bind, Badu's styling
of the collection drove the concept home. According to Jean-Raymond, Badu was
up until 2 a.m. the night before the show making buttons reading "Booze" and "LSD" that were attached
to hats, and were similar to those worn by pilots and bus drivers. The buttons,
Badu said, represented things that people dealing with depression often use to
numb the pain. She also wrapped masking tape around the boots worn by models—which
symbolized stabilizing yourself—and made the decision to include the McCarrel reference.

"Normal bouts of depression are very common with all of us," Badu said. "And we don't really discuss or talk about it. We just kind of numb it some
kind of way. I haven't
personally had a clinical depression but, I mean, it's a shitty world sometimes. Especially if
we don't put down the things
that numb us. And really start to have a dialogue. A conversation about how we
really feel about things."

In full, the collection was reflective of Pyer Moss' utilitarian approach to design in a
palette of black, brown, white and yellow and punctuated by the runway show's
concept of depression. There were sweatshirts that read "Suffer No More" and "Why So Blue;" fur coats adorned
with stickers of yellow sad faces; floor-length parkas; exaggerated necks on
all-white turtlenecks; fur-lined leather bomber jackets; pin-stripe jumpsuits
and trench coats; puffer coats and puffer overalls. There were also shirts that
read "You don't have any
friends in LA"— a nod to Jean-Raymond's brief stint in Los Angeles after his S/S 2016 show last September. The
collection, he told Milk before Saturday's show, "is a about receiving mixed
messages and being in a constant state of flux and confusion."

After his show last season, Jean-Raymond told Mic that he
felt a "little bit freer"
after he tackled police brutality on a New York Fashion Week runway. This
season proved to be no different.

"Every show is personal. Every topic, every theme is always
personal," Jean-Raymond told Mic on Saturday. "It's not like I'm making something that I don't understand — that I didn't live through. Every time that I am able to talk about something
or get it off my chest it's
always a freer feeling."